Crappy Dappy: The Daily Mail and “Foxy Knoxy”

For the Mail is now incapable of [calling] Amanda Knox anything other than Foxy Knoxy. And if you type the words “Foxy Knoxy” into The Daily Mail’s search engine, you come up with a massive 82 results. Which is not bad going for a suspect in a murder committed just 12 fucking days ago!

The post is from November 12th. Little has changed since then, except the number of results is probably much higher now. How about this DM story from 3rd December, the charmingly headlined “The wild, raunchy past of Foxy Knoxy”?

The officer suspected “some kids” were just playing their music too loud, but what he found was no run-of-the-mill summer student party: he later told colleagues it was like a scene from Baghdad.

Gangs of students, high on drink and drugs, were hurling rocks into the road. Cars were swerving to avoid them. Debris littered the road. It was mayhem.

Fearing reprisals, neighbours who had called the police refused to give their names. The police officer called for back-up as the youths began throwing rocks at the windows of houses on the neat, tree-lined streets.

Eventually, after reinforcements had arrived, the students calmed down. Police made only one arrest: the person they held responsible for the party and the disorder.

Her name? Amanda Knox, or, as she prefers to be known, Foxy Knoxy.

She was fined £135. Okay, so not ideal behaviour, but a “wild, raunchy past”? Throwing rocks? Not so much. Also, she might like to be known by that name by her friends; you, DM, are not on nickname terms with the girl. She’s a suspect in an ongoing murder case, but you, the reader, would’ve thought you’d stumbled onto the celeb gossip pages.

Also, freakish stuff like this comes out of the DM’s coverage: “Her intelligence is only average, based on what I’d read on her MySpace blog. She doesn’t offer any real insights or pearls of wisdom about anything.” Do you really want this from her? She’s not an agony aunt, she’s a college student.

Anyway, back to the DM:

“There were people draped over each other.

“I’ve been to a lot of student parties in my time, but I’ve never been to a party like that.

“Everyone just wanted to get drunk, get high and get laid. There was also a lot of violence because everyone was so pumped up.”

Okay, the violence doesn’t sound so good. Was Ms Knox the reason for the violence? She was arrested, but is that more to do with her holding the party, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time? No one looks at those possibilities; the DM likes to imply some kind of guilt anyway. She might have been the instigator behind the whole thing, she might not have been, but one gossipy source does not a great case make.

Also, the person who had never been to a party like that, what with the drinking, the highing and the laying, had clearly been going to children’s parties. What a meaningless quote. They’re at college, it’s their time to try these things.

Not surprisingly, Knox’s mother was mortified when she discovered that her daughter had received her first criminal conviction, although it was a minor crime compared with what would later transpire in the medieval Italian city of Perugia, when the Leeds University student Meredith Kercher was held down, raped and then murdered by having her throat cut.

Um, no one’s been convicted yet. “First criminal conviction” is a tad presumptuous.

She had been deeply unsettled by the fact that her mother, always so conservative and supportive, had struck up a relationship with a man young enough to be Amanda’s brother.

To the shock of their neighbours, Edda at the age of 39 married 27-year-old Christopher Mellas in 2002.

Amanda was 14. Some speculate that this is when the seeds of Amanda’s self-destructive behaviour were sown, even though it was not until she had finally left home that she got the opportunity to break free and rebel – with disastrous consequences.

Also, the balanced reporting of the British tabloid press – a real magnet.

Within hours of arriving in Rome, she e-mailed a former Washington University student, writing excitedly of having sex with a stranger on a train.

Whether that’s true or not, it has no bearing on the case, which is the reason she’s in the news. Also doesn’t make her evil.

And a British family is left to mourn the brutal death of their beautiful daughter, who, it seems, died for no other reason than that she had the terrible misfortune to find herself sharing an apartment with ‘Foxy’ Knoxy.

And I could so on and on and on, highlighting more and more judgmental ignorance and ill-founded attacks on a girl not because she is guilty of murder, but rather because she had the misfortune to become part of a murder investigation at the same time as having an online, accessible identity.

Indeed, and so, any little rays of light in the comments?

Can you stop calling this young woman ‘foxy knoxy’ – the nickname she gave herself – it is irrelevant to the case and detracts from the seriousness of what has happened. A young, innocent woman has died and her family must be going through hell.

– Jw, London, London

When I was her age, I loved being stoned out of my head, was a “man-eater”, hung out in sleazy places & was very wild & depressed. But I was also kind, thoughtful & a peace loving person. The wild life style does not mean you will become a bad person. Even “good” so-called upright people have been murderers & worse.

– Joy, london

“To the shock of their neighbours, Edda at the age of 39 married 27-year-old Christopher Mellas in 2002.”

Thats not shocking,only maybe in the hypocritic dark underbelly of America.

– Mike, cambridge, england

Yay you guys! Not all the comments are quite so enlightened as these, but, yay! It’s ever-so-slightly preferable for people involved in murder cases to be tried in court as opposed to in the pages of the gutter press.

Phew, that was heavy. Now for something more fun: The Winehouse vs The Amstell. Oh yeah.

6 thoughts on “Crappy Dappy: The Daily Mail and “Foxy Knoxy””

[…] Crappy Dappy: The Daily Mail and “Foxy Knoxy” « To strive, to seek … – December 6, 2007. by Suchandrika. A very good post from The Daily Mail Tendency on the Mail’s treatment of Amanda Knox… The gist: For the Mail is now incapable of [calling] Amanda Knox anything other than Foxy Knoxy. And if you type … […]

ALL the judges who have been involved in the case: Judge Claudia Matteini, the judges at the Italian Supreme Court, judge Massimo Riccarelli, and judge Paolo Micheli all thought there were serious indications of Amanda Knox’s and Raffaele Sollecito’s guilt and refused to grant them bail on the grounds that they are mentally unstable, dangerous and could reoffend.

The case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito is formidable.

There are 13 pieces of forensic evidence that link Amanda and Raffaele to the crime, including Amanda’s DNA on the handle of the knife found at Raffaele’s apartment and Meredith’s DNA on the blade, and Amanda’s bare footprints set in Meredith’s blood and Raffaele’s DNA on Meredith’s bloodied and cut bra.

Amanda and Raffaele knew precise details about Meredith’s body which they could only have known if they had been present when Meredith was murdered. Amanda herself admitted she was present when Meredith was murdered in her handwritten note to the police on 6 November.

Amanda and Raffaele not only gave conflicting witness statements, but also gave completely different accounts of where they were, who they were with and what they were doing on the night of the murder.

In the light of the judges’ decisions so far and the forensic evidence which was independently confirmed as accurate and reliable, it looks extremely unlikely that Amanda and Raffaele will be found not guilty.

call me presumpuous, but there’s something about amanda knox, her eyes perhaps that tell me she knows more than she’s willing to admit, especially now that she has had her lawyers instructions. I don’t believe she struck the fatal stab to meredith, but drugs or no drugs, she’s not as confused about her whereabouts at the time of the murder as she’s portraying. I have also taken a variety of different drugs when I was a teenager and could always recall my whereabouts, especially after smoking hash or marijuana. Only if one is skunk-drunk does one become unable to recall the night before. there has been no evidence of any kind that she had been drinking. the proof that she was blinded by her boyfriend that eventually led to a disaster is the picture of him that he posted on his web sight where he is wrapped and holding a clever and bottle of bleach. Call me old-fashioned but that would scare me. But it didn’t scare away Amanda and that reveals her very dark side, which alot of us have. That’s why I say she was led somewhat blinding, being naive and reckless. Her boyfriend is probably numero uno on the guilty list. bad scene all around!